Cross Channel: HP Printers Reject Unofficial Ink, SMBs Want Local Partners

Welcome to Cross Channel, a weekly round up of the most pertinent stories from our sister site ChannelBiz, where you can find out all the latest developments, views and strategies from the world of the channel.

HP Printers block third party cartridges

HP printers are no longer recognising unofficial and cheaper printer ink cartridges after a firmware update. HP admits that as a result of the update, settings had been changed so HP printers would only communicate with cartridges with HP chips.
As a result of the update, printer users are receiving a variety of error messages, including “cartridge problem”, “one or more cartridges are missing or damaged” and “older generation cartridge”.

Printer ranges affected by the firmware update include HP OfficeJet, OfficeJet Pro and OfficeJet Pro X.

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Most SMBs want ‘local’ IT partners

Most senior management at SMBs want to create a “digital workplace”, but admit they will need help from a “local IT partner” to do it, according to a survey commissioned by HPE Aruba.

To become a digital workplace, SME respondents recognised the need to deploy better security policies and for IT departments to establish control of all devices being used for work. To understand how to achieve this, 85 percent intended to seek the advice of a local IT partner.

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Cisco: Few are maximising the full value of the cloud

While cloud adoption continues to accelerate, “few” organisations are maximising the value that cloud can offer, according to research commissioned by Cisco.

According to the global study, nearly 68 percent of organisations are using cloud to help drive business outcomes, a 61 percent increase from last year’s study. The increased cloud adoption is being fuelled by security and Internet of Things (IoT) cloud-based solutions, among others.

However, most organisations (69 percent) do not have mature cloud strategies and only 3 percent have optimised cloud strategies to generate “superior business outcomes”.

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Arrow and Oracle push channel sales

Arrow Electronics and Oracle have rolled out a series of initiatives across North America and EMEA aimed at accelerating channel cloud sales, by providing resellers with expertise and support to help their end-user customers migrate to the cloud.

Through ArrowSphere, Arrow’s global cloud marketplace, Arrow now offers the full suite of Oracle Cloud products – ranging from Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) solutions, including storage and compute, as well as Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offerings such as database, Java, business intelligence, integration and mobile cloud applications.

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